One of the most disturbing stories of the past few weeks has been the arrest of at least seven Israelis on charges of spying or carrying out covert activities on behalf of Iran. Nadav Shragai expresses the shock that he and his compatriots feel toward such betrayal:

The astonishment deepens when examining the profiles of these spies and their predecessors: young and old, ultra-Orthodox and secular, educated and unschooled, immigrants from the former USSR and native-born Israelis. They represent a complete spectrum, typically motivated by greed, though sometimes by ego, feelings of discrimination, and weakened ties to the state.

These questions become even more pressing when contrasting their actions with the countless extraordinary displays of commitment, dedication, and sacrifice for the nation over the past year.

The answer, [however], isn’t complicated. . . . A Jew can indeed be unlearned or educated, clever or foolish, and can be your enemy or friend, inferior or superior, but he cannot be Jewish without a Jewish core.

Today, Shragai points out, is the date commemorated by tradition as the anniversary of the biblical foremother Rachel’s death. He sees in the lore surrounding her a way to appreciate this Jewish core:

We should all familiarize ourselves with the notably relevant consolation prophecy of Jeremiah, the prophet of destruction, who was the first to portray Rachel as a mother shedding tears for her children; the first to describe her weeping, which pierces the gates of heaven, paving the way for the ingathering of exiles and the return of children to their borders.

Jeremiah’s prophecy about Rachel’s children returning to their borders is so relevant today—we weep for our fallen sons, but know they enable the continuation of [Jeremiah’s] prophecy: . . . that there is hope for our future, and that our kidnapped sons and daughters will yet return to their territory.

In 1946, Julius Streicher, a high-ranking SS-officer and a chief Nazi propagandist, was sentenced to death at Nuremberg. Just before he was executed, he called out “Heil Hitler!” and the odd phrase “Purimfest, 1946!” It seems the his hanging alongside that of his fellow convicts put him in mind of the hanging of Haman and his ten sons described in the book of Esther. As Emmanuel Bloch and Zvi Ron wrote in 2022:

Julius Streicher, . . . founder and editor-in-chief of the weekly German newspaper Der Stürmer (“The Stormer”), featured a lengthy report on March 1934: “The Night of the Murder: The Secret of the Jewish Holiday of Purim is Unveiled.” On the day after Kristallnacht (November 10, 1938), Streicher gave a speech to more than 100,000 people in Nuremberg in which he justified the violence against the Jews with the claim that the Jews had murdered 75,000 Persians in one night, and that the Germans would have the same fate if the Jews had been able to accomplish their plan to institute a new murderous “Purim” in Germany.

In 1940, the best-known Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda film, Der Ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”), took up the same theme. Hitler even identified himself with the villains of the Esther story in a radio broadcast speech on January 30, 1944, where he stated that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews “could celebrate the destruction of Europe in a second triumphant Purim festival.”

As we’ll see below, Jews really did celebrate the Nazi defeat on a subsequent Purim, although it was far from a joyous one. But the Nazis weren’t the first ones to see in the story of Esther—in which, to prevent their extermination, the Jews get permission from the king to slay those who would have them killed—an archetypal tale of Jewish vengefulness and bloodlust. Martin Luther, an anti-Semite himself, was so disturbed by the book that he wished he could remove it from the Bible altogether, although he decided he had no authority to do so.

More recently, a few Jews have taken up a similar argument, seeing in the Purim story, and the figure of 75,000 enemies slain by Persian Jews, a tale of the evils of vengeance, and tying it directly to what they imagine is the cruelty and vengefulness of Israel’s war against Hamas. The implication is that what’s wrong with Israel is something that’s wrong with Judaism itself. Jonathan Tobin comments on three such articles:

This group is right in one sense. In much the same way as the Jews of ancient Persia, Israelis have answered Hamas’s attempt at Jewish genocide with a counterattack aimed at eradicating the terrorists. The Palestinian invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7 was a trailer for what they wished to do to the rest of Israel. Thanks to the courage of those who fought back, they failed in that attempt, even though 1,200 men, women and children were murdered, and 250 were kidnapped and dragged back into captivity in Gaza.

Those Jews who have fetishized the powerlessness that led to 2,000 years of Jewish suffering and persecution don’t merely smear Israel. They reject the whole concept of Jews choosing not to be victims and instead take control of their destiny.